On a still
November morning
The fog
rolled in without warning
Just as we
were casting off
With a Great
Lake to cross
Twenty-eight
miles straight
Set a course
for three thirty eight
Four hours
motoring would take us there
Until the fog
came, the morning was fair
It was this
last window of good weather
That Jim and
I would try together
To get Sequoia across Ontario
To Toronto,
to be her home
Fuel, check. Dog, check. Lunch, check
Radio doesn’t
work. What the heck
The motor was
brand new and
Had never
been properly run in
We motored slowly out the river
Into the chop
where we shivered
The fog was
cold, the sun weak
Drops of
moisture beaded the teak
The river current
meets the lake wind
If you don’t
fight it you’ll spin
Visibility
was fifty feet
In weather
like this you can’t cheat
Couldn’t get
the radar to work
Now, as the
pilot, I felt like a jerk
No radar, no
radio, just eyes and a cell
This picnic
cruise was looking like hell
Midway across
Lake Ontario
The motor
sputtered and started to go
We throttled
back and nursed it
But in fifteen minutes we burst it
Dead in the
water, fog all around
We weren’t in
danger, weren’t going to drown
But we had
committed a number of sins
And all our
resources were growing thin
Out of the
fog came looming
The police
launch we usually see zooming
Across the
harbor but this time
They were
coming to throw us a line
I had gotten
a buddy on my cell phone
It just
barely had the guts to reach home
He texted the
towboat’s number to me
I called, and
asked them to come to sea
The police stayed
with us ‘til the towboat came
They bid us
goodbye, we did the same
The tow pilot put on a bridle
Off we went,
with our prop in idle
Two hours it
took to get to Toronto
At the end of
a long wandering tow
We were
nudged and bumped into our slip
And then I
grabbed my stuff and jumped ship
It was
supposed to be a four hour cruise
I’d done it
before, it wasn’t news
Bad
preparation pooched the trip
And I won’t
sail again on that ship
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